


The White Stag

by NevillesGran



Series: Juno Steel and the Good Neighbors [3]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Background Buddy/Vespa and Juno/Peter, Changelings, Fae & Fairies, Fairy Tale Elements, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:35:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21831532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: The legend of Jet Siquliak and the Ruby 7.
Relationships: Jet Sikuliaq & the Ruby 7
Series: Juno Steel and the Good Neighbors [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1566202
Comments: 11
Kudos: 60





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I essentially wrote this while listening to the Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron soundtrack on loop for 2 weeks straight.

You forget to be suspicious of the human boy. That’s your first, and perhaps only, mistake.

He’s been a fixture of the forest for nearly as long as you have. He appeared when you were just a stumbling fawn—much smaller than he is now, still wrapped in baby fat and the fine robes he’d been dressed in by whatever lord or lady stole him away in the first place. Did they earnestly seek to better his condition, before realizing how much work a human child could be? Were they charmed by his bright eyes and flushed cheeks, and thought him an ornament to their house? Did they simply want a pet—and then grew bored, and didn’t bother to come after him when he wandered away one day?

Because they didn’t. Nobody ever came—not until he started to make a nuisance of himself, here and there in nearby castles and towns. And nor had he fled, quiet and agile though he could be even in those bright, heavy robes. There was no desperation of the hunted in his eyes, then; no sense of loss but bewilderment.

That didn’t last. It didn’t last past the first couple days and it certainly didn’t last past the first winter. Not that you paid attention—you saw him now and then as you grew, on bark and berries and the whistle of wind as you raced through the trees. But you never came close. You are a wild white stag of Faerie, and you shall not be tamed. 

But you did see him through those trees, and more often than not, he saw you. There is nothing faster than a wild stag of Faerie, and nothing that can change that proud nature, but at a price: nor can it be concealed. You are white as snow at the height of summer; your antlers are palest birch in the deepest shadows of towering rosewoods. And in the moonlight, you  _ shine _ .

So you see him across the rushing summer river, drinking his fill (with permission from the river, or it would already have dragged him down to feed the willow roots) and in the moment before you dart away, he raises his head and looks back. You watch him dash back into the safety of the trees with furious lords and ladies on his heels, one fine spring night, all dressed for dancing and their picnic basket in his arms. One autumn he thinks himself delirious to glimpse you so close, just a few yards away, as he drags himself through fever and fear to the woods-witch to beg her to take away an infection in his leg. 

You meet eyes as you both run through the trees from a royal hunt, for the split second before you leap far ahead. They aren’t hunting you in particular, nor one stray changeling child, but anything in the land is prey when the faerie hunt doth ride. 

It’s at the river that you make your second mistake: you see that he’s cut his hair again, and think nothing of it. It varies in length like the color-changing leaves, though less seasonal. Few things in the forest change as quickly and erratically as the human boy. His hair has been longer of late, as he spends less time in the forest and more trying to make some sort of life in nearby castles or towns. (There are other humans in Faerie, who are born and die here in peace so long as they make their allegiances and don’t try to iron-smith.) The rest of him has grown, too, taller and wider. But it’s no strange thing to see his hair suddenly short.

This is part and parcel with your first mistake, but it stands out because there is  _ one  _ way to tame a wild white stag of Faerie. A story with only one possible outcome is no story at all—there must be the option of antithesis. So if a hunter should catch you (the fastest creature in any world), and get a collar around your throat (the wildest creature in any world), and if that collar is made of the hunter’s own hair and nothing else (flimsy, loose, breakable)—then you shall be tamed, and tamed utterly. For the one hunter, at least.

So you aren’t suspicious and you take little notice of how he’s armed himself, and then you make your third mistake: you don’t see the rope trap until it’s almost too late. 

_ Almost _ . The movement catches your eye at the last moment—the jerk of his hand, the shifting of earth and damp stone under your feet. What was meant to hobble you just barely catches your left hind leg as you leap free-

But catch you it does; trips and twists you until something  _ cracks _ .

You’re already running.

So is the boy, behind you.

It would be traditional to say that you raced for three days and three nights. Really, it would be traditional to say that you raced for eternity, fleet as the wind, ceaseless and wild as white-water rapids. You are a wild white stag of Faerie: few things in any world are faster, and nothing at all more free. 

But a traditional stag also has four unbroken legs, and it turns out that three-fourths of eternity is about...a day and a half, before the boy catches up with you. You are shuddering with pain and desperation as you canter down a hillside, eyes red, mouth foam-flecked. You cannot go any faster, any farther. 

So you turn and face him, head lowered, antlers sharp. There is a brief time each year when your antlers are shed and not yet regrown: this is not that time. You can’t put weight on your left hind leg, but you are a wild white stag of Faerie, and to hunt you is peril.

He is little better than you: bruised and aching from sprinting through forest and fields alike; clothing torn and skin scraped bloody and one ankle twisted. Panting for breath, near to collapse with hunger and fatigue—lords and ladies were not meant to race wild stags, much less human changelings. But he is standing with a sturdy loop of rope around one arm, his own dark hair woven into the fibers, and he charges first.

What follows is neither kind nor clean, nor dignified enough for legend. You strike with antlers, hooves, teeth; he is agile and clever as he evades, as he clambers onto your bucking back and work his snare down around your antlers. He has a knife to further bleed you, fingers that dig into your fur, and rope that catches at your throat, too thick to break with a toss of your head. You snap and twist and buck like exactly what you are: a beast born as wild as the wind, the river, the heart of Faerie itself. 

You are both very stubborn, and very desperate. You don’t spare the breath to bellow; you just spin, rear, scrape him against trees. Collapse backwards as your left hind leg cracks even further. He hangs on grimly, bony knees digging into your sides, even as his head cracks against a stone and your weight crushes him. This close, he smells like salt and iron—like nothing you’ve ever scented before, nothing at all in Faerie, but you fear it like you fear death. You roll back over and he’s still there, setting the rope in place then cutting it away quickly and carefully, oh so carefully, until it can be nothing but his own hair. You struggle back to something like your feet, to have leverage to throw him; he clings on.

He doesn’t seem to notice when he’s won. He makes one last desperate cut,  _ so close _ to ruining his own head-grown thread, then finally drops the knife to grab hold as you make one last desperate bid to throw him—but last it is. Your own shaking makes the last scraps of hemp fall away, and that’s...it. The boy continues to cling on, knees digging into your sides, fingers tangled in the fur of your neck. He is exhausted beyond measure and determined beyond reason.

You sink down again, because you, too, are exhausted, and your left hind leg is very broken. It will heal and heal true, but not yet.

After another minute, you twist your neck around and lick at the boy’s hair. It tastes of sweat and blood and dirt and other things—not entirely pleasant, but not entirely unpleasant.

He raises his head to stare at you, finally realizing that you’ve stopped moving. You stare back, with dark brown eyes that have always been more like a human’s than the bright lords’ and ladies’. 

“Hello,” he says, stupid with fatigue and a cracked head. “I should name you.”

He looks around—at the trees you two have broken, the ground torn up, the bloodstained skin and clothes and fur. His gaze settles on the latter, on a single drop of blood glittering like a gem against snow.

“Ruby,” he decides. “Your name is Ruby.”

That’s that, then. You’ve never had a name before—a name is a civilized, defining thing. It settles on you as firmly as the loop of braided hair around your neck.

You lick his face. The blood is still uncomfortable, but the salty sweat and tears are quite nice.

He giggles and then sags again, your back the bed and your neck, the pillow. “I am Jet,” he murmurs. “Jet Siquliak. I’m sorry about all this.”

If you were human, your eyebrows would raise. You cannot speak and you didn’t have a name until a minute ago, but you are of Faerie born: you know a True Name when it’s shown to you.

You nudge your Jet again—yours, as surely as you are his, now. This, too, is part of the story. But he’s already fallen asleep. 

When he wakes, he splints your leg, and then his ribs. Your leg does heal and heal true, in just under two weeks—you are a white stag of Faerie. Nothing that prevents you from running can be tolerated for long.

Possibly you leave before it’s  _ quite _ healed, and certainly before Jet’s ribs are, because, as he explains, time is short. The local duchess has a portal to the mortal world open in a hidden room in her castle, and it will close on the solstice and not open for another hundred years. He means to go through it—but on his own, he can’t get through the household and guards. Stealth isn’t enough (he’s tried). He needs to go faster than the wind. 

You’d never have imagined being  _ inside _ a building before. If you had, there would have been chains and iron involved, or at least ropes of hair. There are, of course—but it’s not so bad, when you’re running freely and all the lords and ladies and their servants and guards are shouting in your wake. One gets a sword up in time to slice at you—but Jet brought a small tree branch, and from your back, he catches the blade so hard that it flies from the guard’s hand. You jump the last stone barriers and there it is: a pool of water glittering with moonlight that isn’t overhead. 

You leap through.


	2. Chapter 2

The mortal world is strange in every way. There are buildings like trees, tall and common and made of neither stone nor wood. The air feels thick and acidic, pressing against your nose, your throat. Lights like stars twinkle everywhere without the sharp scent of magic or the fierce warmth of fire, and there are so. Many. Humans. Some don’t seem to notice that you’ve leapt out of a fountain in what seems to be a town square, if this forest of buildings can be called a _town._ Others see but look away as though it’s shameful, or as though they see visitors from Faerie every day. Still others point and shout, and raise weapons on their wrists—you can only assume they’re weapons, the way they buzz and glare.

Jet squeezes his heels against your sides but you don’t need the order—you _run._ Some humans give chase by foot, and they’re quickly overtaken by growling beasts of iron and stranger materials. But you are still a white stag of Faerie, and none shall overtake you so long as you have four good legs and ground to run on. 

The vast buildings start to fade into the background, replaced by things recognizable as houses, with fewer humans and growling iron monsters around. You don’t stop running. You don’t stop until the buildings disappear completely and you reach a real forest, with trees of wood and air that presses slightly less bitterly against your throat, and a small lake tucked within its borders. The water, too, is stringent, but welcome—you ran for hours, to find anything that seemed like home.

Jet slides off your back and drinks as well, just as shaken. He rubs his face with wet hands and leans against your forelock.

“Very well,” he says. “We will have to figure this out.”

The first thing you determine is that stags aren’t common here at all, neither alone nor ridden, and it’s nearly impossible not to attract attention. Not in the forest and not in the streets, and not in the town so massive that the buildings tower like cliffs. So the second thing you figure out is how to run and hide in this new world. It’s much the same rules as in the old—startlement, speed, and silence.

The second forest you find is smaller, and fake as any glamour. The trees are real enough, the streamwater, the birds that sing and the fish that swim. But the boundaries are marked by hard roads, and the trees neatly trimmed. The paths are cleared by yet more humans, so frequently that even you have difficulty evading them.

Jet leaves you there each morning to slip into the surrounding town and return to his old habits of finding a favor to do here, an unprotected picnic basket there. He doesn’t know the language—Faerie left the mortal world behind millennia ago, including its many forms of speech. But he’s still young enough to be clever with words, and naturally more clever on top of that; he picks it up quickly. And he looks like he belongs here. Likely he does—likely he was stolen from this planet, maybe even this city. Neither of you have travelled far from the forests of your youth, until now; you likely wouldn’t have come out on a different world.

(The mortal world has different iterations, different _planets_ , in a way Faerie does not. The terrain may vary—forests and plains, mountains and valleys, deserts and seas—but Faerie is all one vast land. The boundaries are the same, because some distinctions are too great not to be marked across worlds, but where mortal planets are divided by the gulf of space and stars, Faerie might have a vast unsailable ocean or sky-cresting mountain range—or a burbling brook or simple wooden fence.) 

Jet comes back each night to report to you what he’s learned. Sometimes it’s just stories, sometimes he has books. One time he brings a _comm,_ one of those things that buzz and glare. It turns out to be a weapon, but rather something like stones of farseeing and of farspeech and a library rolled into one, and a dozen other mortal things he sets determinedly to mastering, new language and all. 

You understand him no matter what he speaks, because that is still his hair threaded in a loop around your neck.

One night, he comes back late and says, “I found us a job. They will need to see you, but I think it will be fine.”

So the next night, he rides you into the city, and in a dark alley, you meet two strangers. Humans, of course, older than Jet but not by much. Hardened but in a different way—used to cold winters and the fear of the hunt, but turned more jagged than graceful with it. 

They startle to see you trot up, your hooves tapping softly against the stone street.

“That’s a horse!” hisses one. “You said you had a car!” The other simply has a weighted baton swinging menacingly in one hand.

“He is a stag,” Jet says witheringly (at least, you can hear that it’s withering.) “And I said that I have a _ride_. I did not promise a car.”

“Of course it’s a horse,” says the one with a baton. She gestures broadly. “Look at the horns!”

After some further argument, peace is reached, and the plan reviewed. One human will already be in the magnificent inn they plan to steal from, full of gold and other treasures, because they work there as a petty cook. They will let Jet and the girl with the baton in, and keep watch while the two of them rob the rooms. The girl will take the upper floors and Jet the lower, so that he can get out fastest to start the...you.

“I am sorry for the indignity,” he says softly, stroking your neck. “But Teret will stay behind, to pretend their own innocence, so you will only need to carry Symos as well as myself—and the candelabras and such.”

You chew at his hair a little in acquiescence. It _is_ an indignity, but you are his; he can invite someone else to ride as he wishes, and you will bear them just as carefully. 

As well, of course, as the gold candelabras.

The heist doesn’t go as planned. They never do. An alarm is raised before your thieves are barely halfway through, and all three humans end up clinging to your back as you race overburdened through the dark stone streets. But still you are a white stag of Faerie, nothing but a flash in the darkness car-beasts that chase you. 

And so begins your career as a getaway driver. Or, Jet’s career, but it’s not as though you need directions for where to run. But nor will you tolerate being ridden by anyone else, unless he is on your back as well—and with richer food than nuts and berries and hard-hunted forest prey, he grows another six inches and three stone, so you won’t be carrying more than one other person anyway. Though it seems you can understand their speech well enough, so long as Jet is near.

You acquire regular saddlebags for the treasures. You also acquire a reputation, very quickly, and a new horde of hunters on your trail. You are what you are, wild and true; you cannot hide your form like a lord or lady of Faerie, nor can your changeling boy, and a great white stag stands out in this world of stone and iron. 

You learn about lasers, how they burn far less than iron but still hot enough to hurt.

This time when you flee, it is with calculation and planning, and a much farther destination. Jet finds a spaceship whose captain has hold space set up to smuggle large livestock and no inclination to ask questions. You are well on the run, by then, caught on too many cameras—and ausual, something goes wrong; you have to leap from a building onto the open ramp of the departing ship. A few lasers flash as you fly across the gap, lit from above by the ship’s lights, and Jet wavers on your back. But your hooves hit metal and you are scrambling, sliding, as the bay doors close behind you, and your hunters have no means of following you into the sky.

Jet is still on your back, of course. As though you could drop him.

But the next world is...also unforgiving, as is the one after that. The mortal worlds simply aren’t suited to a white stag large enough to carry two humans as well as saddlebags of stolen goods. You try a more rural planet for a while, all forests and fields as in your youth...but the air is still thick with the tang of mortal blood and other chemicals, and both of you are quickly bored.

You do well enough. You stay on the move—as you ever did; just the two of you whenever possible. You get fitted— _fitted!_ How tame you’ve grown!—for new saddlebags, to lie more smoothly against your flanks. The mortal worlds are wracked with war that poisons worlds; you get a device to protect you from radiation woven through your antlers and you visit forsaken battlefields to scavenge for the priceless things the dead left behind. Sometimes you save a few still alive, when they look so hunted and desperate that it strikes a memory.

But still the hunters come. So Jet starts paying more attention to rumors, to secrets whispered in dark rooms with iron held in nervous hands. The humans don’t know what they’re talking about, for the most part...but you do. You recognize the door when you see it, tucked against the side of an old brick building. A faded sign in a boarded-up window says “CLINIC” and nothing else—it’s not the sort of place you’re supposed to enter if you don’t have at least an idea of what’s inside.

The doorway should be too small for you, and it is—Jet walks in front, and you duck and tilt your head most uncomfortably to fit through. But inside, the woods-witch’s hut is only a little cramped. 

(It’s nice, in fact. The air is warm and slightly smokey, but in the clean, fresh way of Faerie, rather than the faint smothering that fills all mortal cities. Yet something of mortality lingers here as well—maybe this place is somewhere in between, or maybe it’s the witch herself. Or both.)

She sits at the table, ancient as the trees, and raises bushy eyebrows. “So you really did catch a stag— _and_ made it to the world of men. That story will be told for decades.”

“Thank you, Lady,” says Jet. There is little greater you can be, in Faerie, than a good story. 

“And then you come back here,” she says flatly. “I’m still not a waystation, boy, if it’s your choice of worlds you’re regretting.”

“I am not,” Jet says firmly. He puts a hand on your neck. “We are having some...trouble, in the mortal world. Can you make him look less like a stag?”

The woods-witch cackles. “‘Less like a stag’? The wild white stags of Faerie are what they are, boy, more than almost any of us. Even I don’t have the power to change that.” Her smile is a wolf’s in winter. “If that’s your plea, go back to the world you’ve chosen and deal with the consequences there.” 

“But he isn’t, really,” Jet argues. “He is not wild anymore—I caught him, and tamed him. And neither of us is of Faerie anymore—we chose that. We just need a strong glamour, to carry between worlds.”

You put your head over his shoulder and huff, to emphasize the point. And because something in the witch’s eyes warns you to keep precious things close in this place.

She laughs again, but it’s more a snort than a cackle, and she steps forward to rub her hands against the velvet of your nose, against your antlers which are broad but new at this time of year. Her touch is gnarled and stiff as bark, but gentle.

“I don’t cast glamours,” she says eventually. “I can take away the appearance of a stag—but there will be nothing to fill the void. You must find ways to suggest to the minds of others what you want their eyes to see.”

“I can do that,” your clever boy says confidently. 

“And whatever you think, he will remain a wild white stag of Faerie in his heart,” she warns. “Some things cannot be taken away.”

“Good,” he says fiercely, as you snort in agreement with them both. She could _try._

“My price is: either I shall take his appearance wholly, sight and sound and all the rest, and you will never get it back. _Or_ I shall take the cause of it as well—why this must be done, what story has led him to this point.”

At this, your Jet shifts uncomfortably, and his hand goes to the hair fastened around your neck, still fresh as the day it was cut. “If you took the story...he would lose that completely, too. Would he remember me?”

The witch’s dark eyes glint amid her wrinkles. “That’s the risk you take.”

Jet’s fingers card through the fur of your shoulder, gripping a little too tight. You roll your eyes and shoulder-check him, just gently, and push your nose back into the witch’s wrinkled palms.

“Well, that’s agreement if I ever saw it.” She cackles once more. “This will be a story for _centuries_.”

And she’s merciful, in the end, or maybe selfish, in her smoky little hut: you step back into the mortal world with every word of your story and leave behind a painting of a white stag on her wall, running wild through the woods, laced with the scent of damp fur and fresh breeze, the sound of pounding hooves, the brush of muscle and bone and antler. 

You already have radiation shielding to wind through your antlers, a lamp to set on one shoulder, a graceful harness to hold bags of weapons or treasure as the job needs. Jet buys new bags, still leather but bright red instead of camouflaged white. He etches a wheel into the casing of the lamp. He buys a Solar license plate and hangs it around your neck, with your name and a lucky number—because most cars have numbers. And a couple extra cords to secure it to your shoulders.

It feels ridiculous, honestly. But when you arrive on the next planet, where hopefully they haven’t heard of a young man with an impossible white stag, the first human to see you blinks a couple times and says, “That’s a nice...hovercar?”

“Indeed,” says Jet, and pats your neck. “And must faster than those of the duchess’s security teams.”

And then...you don’t become a story.

You are Jet Siquliak with the Ruby 7, wanted for arrest on 17 worlds and for questioning on 35 more. You steal from the royal palace on Nienna 12, the First Bank of Hyperion on Mars, the Right and Holy Order of the Centaurian High See. You work with criminals and con artists wanted the galaxy over. A few of them are too clear-eyed, too free-thinking, and maybe they believe it when Jet insists that you’re a very quick and clever car or maybe they just know that nobody would believe them if they tried to tell the truth. Others just compliment your leather seats (ha) and bright red paint (ha), and sharp turns, acceleration, ceaseless pace. 

You are the mortal world’s equivalent of a wild white stag of Faerie: you cannot be caught. You cannot be tamed. You are faster than anything on land and most things by air or sea, and twice as clever. You appear for a split second between trees, across the street, through a window, and then you are gone into the distance with the priceless painting, the carefully guarded gold, the contents of any interesting vault between Earth and Icarus V.

A guard’s flung plasma knife grazes your neck and the laws of Faerie do not always apply out here; the collar of hair breaks even as you fling yourself into the open air, from the museum balcony to the opposite roof. Jet is on your back and the legendary Iris of Jupiter is clutched in his arms; you scramble as you hit the other roof and keep running, but none of you fall. It’s far too late for a little loop of hair to matter—he caught you and he tamed you; you’re his and he’s yours, and together…

You don’t become a story.

You become a _legend_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The tone I was going for here was roughly when the horse in Over the Garden Wall says, “I wanna steal.”


	3. Chapter 3

You return to Mars again and again. First because it has one of the best criminal-exclusive spaceports and secondly because it acquires a woman named Buddy. You worked with Buddy many times, years ago, and Jet likes her—as a friend, rare in Faerie and just as rare across the mortal worlds. Her gaze is very clear; she pats your side and calls you “dear”, which makes Jet smile. You get used to a spot outside her bar, which stands as a lighthouse amid the desert’s storm. She stocks the oats that Jet says with a straight face improve his Ruby 7’s fuel.

Sometimes, desperate, ambitious, or simply very stupid people try to steal you while you wait, thinking you a car unguarded, and thus free. You particularly enjoy catching them on your antlers and flinging them away, but sometimes for variation you kick them. It’s a game you’ve been playing for years.

Sometimes when Jet comes back to you at night, he admits that he’s worried about Buddy. She lost her partner, her lover, and now she courts death instead. 

One day, there are other people milling around outside the front doors, because the bar hasn’t opened at the right time. Jet breaks the doors open. It’s been a long time since he had nothing but wit and agility to make his way in life. Not long after, he rushes back out with Buddy in his arms, and it seems as though she’s caught her final lover at last.

No—you can feel her chest rise ever so slightly as Jet lifts her onto your back, leaps up after her and tugs her into his lap. You catch his urgency and spring away before they’re even settled (and drop neither, obviously) to the best place you know for miracles. 

But halfway through the desert, Jet sits up straight. You slow, and stop.

“We cannot take her to the witch,” he says, realizing it as he speaks. He runs a hand through Buddy’s faded red hair and it drifts away toward the matching-red sand. “If she loses anything else, there will be nothing left of her.”

The Cerberus Province, you know, you’ve deliberately left behind, because the prices it demands are as high as those of the lords and ladies of Faerie. You turn your head toward Hyperion City, ears flicking in question.

“Yes,” says Jet. And so you go. 

But the prices are still high. Life is expensive in any world, particularly if you want it to last, and a single eye somehow nearly as much. So before you know it, you find yourself in a mechanic’s garage—full of iron but very clean, as garages go, and one you’ve been in before for appearance’s sake. The owner has too-clear eyes and too much knowledge of her craft to be fooled by a little slight of mind, but she’s kept her mouth shut about far worse than one white stag. 

Today, she proclaims you in perfect condition and steps back, a neutral party, as a gleeful mobster rubs their hands together and tells Jet with no real sympathy that it’s a shame, really, that he has debts to pay—but they’re always ready to help an old friend, and of course they’ll look after the legendary Ruby 7.

You aren’t worried. It isn’t the first time he’s “sold” you. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book.

You aren’t worried until Jet bargains them to something nearly twice the price and then says, “I accept—with one other condition of the sale. You will need to cut some strands of your hair and tie it into a string, to be looped around the steering wheel.”

“What?” asks the mobster who would buy you (who sees your “bright paint” and “spinning wheels.”) 

“It is a custom of my childhood home,” Jet says, in the best tradition of Faerie truth-telling.

You stamp your feet and cry out softly, showing your antlers in aborted threat. 

“I will give you a moment to think on it,” says Jet, and walks back to you.

“I am sorry,” he says softly, in the language of Faerie that he next to never speaks anymore. He pets your nose. “But I do not wish to risk the bargain rebounding, with Buddy still so close to death. The sale must be true.” He leans his head against yours. “I _will_ purchase you back, as soon as she is well and I am able.”

You understand. You’ve lived in the mortal world for longer than you have not, but you were born of Faerie and its laws still bind you. He was not and they do not, save in some parts of his heart, but he is bound to you, and that is enough cause for worry, with a friend’s life at stake. The bargain should not be reneged.

And you are his. He tricked you and raced you and rode you and won you, and he asks this of you. So you lower your head with a sigh and let him lead you back to the mobster. You keep your head bowed as the mobster cuts off a few hanks of their hair and, under Jet’s careful instruction, ties it into a rope. The funds are transferred, Jet’s face is still, and the mobster ties their collar around your neck.

(You take back every kind thought you’ve had for Buddy and her oats. You think you might even hate her a little.)

And that’s...that. You feel no particular affection toward your new master, and certainly no respect, but when they mount clumsily and say, “Go,” you do. You run as fleetly as you ever did, and you do not drop them. 

You really don’t think much of them, though. Nor do they think of you—not in the right way. They blink and squint, shift uncomfortably, brush their hand against your snow-white fur and birch-pale antlers and still don’t seem to see through the glamour, or rather, the lack thereof. Their mind cannot pierce what it thinks it should see.

They only ride you a couple more times before you are once again in a mechanic’s—a new one, whose eyes are clear but whose mouth is a hard line, and you wonder how good he is at keeping secrets. 

He offers to buy you, and the mobster is so impatient, so uncomfortable with the difference between what their eyes see (and ears hear, nose smells, hands touch, tongue could taste...) and what their mind insists must be true, that they accept on the spot. 

They don’t mention that anyone who wants to control you should bind you with a loop of hair. They never knew. You have neither personal nor natural obligation to obey this mechanic—

—but the threat of force is still a powerful motivator. You are surrounded by iron and he knows it. As soon as the mobster is out the door, he closes it (too small for you to easily run through anyway; you’d have to break it) and advances back on you with a wrench he lifts from a table.

He also picks up a chain that reeks of iron.

“Yeah, you ain’t gonna give me trouble, fairy horse,” he says. “Don’t worry—you ain’t gonna stay long, either.”

He locks you in a room to the side, with neither sunlight nor fresh air nor room to do more than pace a few steps, and you barely notice because the iron fetter _hurts_. It burns on the very hind leg you broke decades ago, at the river in your forest, as though the wound had never healed at all—never even changed beyond that first bright shock of blinding pain, now everlasting.

(You decide that you almost certainly do hate Buddy.)

But the mechanic isn’t lying. In scarcely over a day, he escorts an old man into your prison, with a woman half a step behind. The old man is dimly familiar—a thief you worked with once, decades ago, when you were still new to this world. When you had not yet traded away your appearance for a way to fit in.

He is clear-eyed, but not quite enough—but after he squints, he pulls a shard of crystal from his pocket and looks through it instead. Then he smiles, broad like a hunting cat. There is a scent like crisp snowmelt, like the _ting_ of a silver bell in the air, and you recognize the crystal for what it is: Faerie glass, to show the truth of what is seen through it.

The thief’s name is Engstrom, and he has clearly spent time researching the bits and pieces of Faerie left in this world, and stealing everything he can. He already comes with a careful thread of hair to tie around your neck—and you are too iron-sick to do more than toss your head a couple times in resistance. He chastises the mechanic for that, tries to argue that the price should be lowered because you’re hurt. The mechanic argues that _he_ would have been hurt had he not, which is right—you would have driven them both through, by now, if you could. If Engstrom hadn’t bound you _before_ he had the iron taken off.

And once again, that’s that. The old thief, too, mounts clumsily, but this time because he is old, not because he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s smug enough to make up for it.

But you…

At first you are still woozy, and the pain in your leg lingers terribly. But the burning sensation spreads through you as you start to run, in a way that doesn’t hurt. In a way that warms your blood and fires your muscles. You realize that you are _angry._

Or at least full of spite.

So when Engstrom tells you to stop, you stop so abruptly that he rocks forward, nearly hitting his head on your antlers. When he orders you to stop more slowly, you ease into it like a dying fire, fading slow step by slow ste. When he demands that you turn, you wind like a lazy river, great curves that sweep the land—and then, the other direction, you become a spinning whirlwind, nearly fast enough to buck him off (though not _quite_ enough—you cannot drop him, not while his collar is on your neck.)

There are consequences. He takes you back to his hotel in the desert and he treats you like a prize—no starving or any such base cruelty; no more terrible iron. He just orders you to stay. 

And stay.

And stay. In this sunless garage full of lifeless cars and every now and then a couple humans, who think you are one of them. One of the cars. 

Engstrom comes to ride you sometimes, and more often to just look at you and be pleased with himself. You never weaken enough to touch him by choice, to so much as scrape a hoof or let out a sigh, or do anything but stare haughtily back. But you do let up a little with regards to being ridden fairly. At least you are _outside,_ and _running._

Briefly. Oh, so briefly. You barely have time to breath the air, stretch your legs, before he reins you in (he makes you wear _reins_ ) and turns you around, and it’s back to the sunless, airless garage.

You were born a wild white stag of Faerie. You grew up in a forest as untamed as yourself, of towering trees and crisp, clean wind and a rushing river with willows on its banks. You ran every day until you were caught, and then you continued running, because you do not look it anymore but that is what you _are_. And you are trapped in a stone building full of dead air and drying iron, in a small space within it with the allowance to pace a couple steps backward and forward at most. 

Over the years—the _years_ —Engstrom comes less and less. You weaken further, in spirit if not body. You actually raise your head and step forward when you see him, because maybe today– maybe he will take you _out_ —

And sometimes he does. But less and less. You think it probably isn't malice, truly. He’s just _old_. This is the problem with mortality.

(You aren’t quite enough of Faerie to escape it either, anymore. You were caught and bound by a human, after all, and it would be too cruel of the universe to demand that you go on without him. Even if that seems to be what it is doing… You will be hale and hearty until the day you die.)

You spend your days waiting for him. You have nothing else to do. You spend your days waiting for Jet, who said he would purchase you back as soon as Buddy was well and he had the funds to do it. You wonder if maybe you should hate him, too. You don’t understand why it’s taking so long. You’re almost entirely certain that you’d know if he were dead—you know in the way you know grass is green that you’d sense it if Engstrom was killed, with his claim around your neck, and _he_ wasn’t the man who first caught you and rode you in the wilds of Faerie.

You’re still trapped. As a gesture of kindness, perhaps, Engstrom removes your saddlebags, your radiation shielding, everything but the plate that proudly declares your name (for this realm.) Who would expect to see anything but a car, after all, in this square of space in this sunless garage on this planet without trees or rivers or air that doesn’t choke and kill— _would_ that you could run in just that choking air again—

You’re existentially bored. You _ache_ for the open road. 

You think you might be going mad. 

You’re sure it must be some feverish dream, when the faerie knight walks into the garage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What’s next is exactly what you think is next.


	4. Chapter 4

Okay, _faerie knight_ is an overstatement. A could-be, would-be Faerie knight. Though the lords and ladies of Faerie are eternally youthful, he is genuinely young for their kind; you can tell that much from the fawnish awkwardness of him. Graceful for a human, of course, but not for a lord of Faerie—or maybe a page, at best, at his age.

And his glamour is slipshod, far more instinct than craft. It wouldn’t matter to you—you were a wild white stag of Faerie and you still are, because the wild white stags of Faerie more than almost any other creature cannot change what they are; in turn, you can generally see truly what others are as well. But this glamour all but flickers around the edges, and beneath is certainly a lord of Faerie, however clumsy and fawnish. The air of it clings to him, the blithe arrogance and the faintest scent of a land eternal.

But so does the tang of sweat and iron, the whisper of a hundred worlds and all of them mortal. He wears them as casually as a well-loved coat, and much more easily than the glamour.

You knew the other kind of changeling exists, but you’ve never met one before. It’s enough to make the madness abate, a little.

And he certainly sees _you_. He comes right for you, barely restraining a wide smile. It’s a little like a hungry fox’s—but a fox knows the terror of being hunted. It is just confident that it’s clever enough to evade the hunters.

He has a human companion, squinting in confusion at you and worry at him, who asks, “Nureyev?”

“There, there, dear,” the faerie murmurs, and the human quiets. You aren’t sure you should approve of that—Jet certainly didn’t enjoy being stolen away to Faerie, and you _certainly_ know better than to trust a lord or lady, _particularly_ when they smile (they always smile.)

But he slips a finger beneath Engstrom’s collar and says, “I’ll break this and take you into the open sky again, if you’ll enter my service instead. Carry my companion and myself as safely and quickly as you can, wherever I bid, until by deed or death I release you.”

It’s a terrible idea and a terrible deal. Maybe he’s grown up in the mortal worlds but the scent of Faerie is only a little less recent; he certainly knows how to promise exactly what you want in exchange for undefined and indefinite service...

And you don’t _care._

You scrape your hoof and snort impatiently, lower your head and butt your cheek gently against his, and hope he understands the agreement. 

He does. He breaks Engstrom’s chain with a snap of his wrist and an even more vulpine grin.

“What the _hell_ is going on?” the human demands.

“It’s a _legendary_ car,” the faerie assures him. He pushes the human onto your back. “It’s the car Jet Siquliak used to steal the Iris of Jupiter.” 

You preen a little. It’s nice to be known. In return, you carry them over to the locker in which Engstrom has stored your equipment, because you are _desperate_ to leave this garage but you have no particular interest in dying inch by inch in the irradiated desert.

And then you couldn’t care less what he thinks of you, or what he’s doing with this human, because it’s a charming word to the guards to open the door and then as they come to, you are leaping over their heads and _outside._

The air is dry and bitter, laced with death, but it turns to wind in your wake. The red ground is hard and fresh beneath your hooves. The sun is bright and the sky is as wide and free as it can be, and the faerie laughs as you outpace the cars sent to stop you, because you are a wild white stag of Faerie and _nothing_ on this planet is as fleet.

You did agree to a contract, though, so you go where the faerie steers—Nureyev, his human keeps calling him, mostly with exasperation. You slow and stop much too soon, near what looks like a rocket launcher. 

“We’re going to ride that to a train,” he says as they dismount, pointing at the rocket, “and then be on the train for a while. See if you can keep up, and find us again.”

You didn’t really expect to be released after one little ride. You roll your eyes and scrape your hoof against the ground. As though you could be outraced by a _train_.

You certainly can’t be outraced by the rocket. It’s close—you barely keep ahead of it; maybe you’re stiff, after all that confinement? But then, you’ve been beaten by rockets now and again. The mortal world has wonders that Faerie couldn’t dream of.

...You can also be outraced by a train, apparently. You’ve never seen anything that fast.

You cry out for the sheer joy of the challenge. The wind is sharp and the ground is just the right amount of hard and your heart beats with your hooves and the whirring of the magnets. The landscape disappears beneath you and breathlessly, you _fall behind_.

This turns out to be for the best. You get to watch from a safe distance as Nureyev and his human appear from thin air only to be captured, and the train turned into a ball of fire behind them.

You are left alone in the desert still fresh and bright to be run, unchained, any path before you.

Except that you are still a creature of Faerie, and you made a deal with another creature of Faerie who very deliberately did _not_ release you from it. You sigh, and stay at a safe distance as you follow the car.

You wait outside the burial mound for nearly six days before Nureyev finds you again. He looks terrible—his glamour is in rags and his clothing is worse; he leans his head against your flank and most of his weight follows, until you could sidestep and he would fall.

You watch him curiously until he levers himself back up, sunlight twisting back into illusion to hide the bags under inhuman eyes.

“No running quite yet,” he says, half to you and half to himself. “I need...food, more knives, perhaps rest. Then we rescue Juno.”

You start to think that perhaps your were wrong about who was stealing whom away.

You understand a little more a few days later, when he staggers out of the tomb again but this time bloodier, with his human who is bloodiest of all, and missing an eye. Nureyev hoists him onto your back nearly unconscious. Once again, you don’t need a pinch of heels to pick up the urgency, and spring as soon as they’re settled.

“Juno Steel, don’t you _dare_ bleed out on me,” Nureyev Names and demands—no, _pleads_. You think that maybe you aren’t aiding in theft at all. 

You put on a burst of speed, across the dry Martian desert turned grey with moonlight.

He leans forward and grips your fur tightly and for a dizzying moment, you aren’t being ridden—you are _carried_ , and then instead of hard Martian stone, you’re racing over packed soil and waving green fields; the sky is lit by starry twilight and the air is clear as any other Faerie dusk. You don’t hesitate—your strength feels renewed and you leap forward even faster, even as you twist back to look at Nureyev in surprise.

He is unalarmed and focused, too-bright eyes narrowed as wind whips through his hair. He holds Juno Steel close, who squints his remaining eye and slurs, “We’re onna horse?”

“Stag,” says Nureyev, and pushes your head forward again. “Between the trees—there.”

You lunge between two poplars and again there is the dizzying twist of space, the loss of control—but not of speed, as you hit the Martian desert again, and the shifted stars and distant dome-shimmer says you’ve come a thousand miles and a couple hours in minutes. 

_That’_ s new.

You toss your head with a cry and keep running, outpacing the dawn itself.

Life still has a high price in Hyperion City, but not as much if it’s just a little blood loss, and an eye that can be fixed later. Once Juno is released from the hospital, you carry them back to a hotel, and roll your eyes as they lean on one another to walk in, smiling like they’ve both been enchanted. At least Nureyev takes care to pick a place with a park nearby, for you to graze in.

That’s where he finds you the next morning, with an easy smile and glamour still slipshod but sharp as nails. And no human on his arm.

“My companion today is wanderlust,” he says as he vaults lightly onto your back. “I’m tired of Mars. Let’s go somewhere _completely_ different.”

You can hardly argue.

Ten days later, you are on a small moon in the Palamedes system, watching Nureyev get thrown out of a bar. 

“—but don’t stay here,” the matron snaps as she drops him on the sidewalk—not unkindly, but without brooking argument. 

Nureyev stays sprawled where she left him. It takes a lot to get a faerie drunk on anything that isn’t honey or starlight, but this is the third bar; he’s made an effort. You nudge him with one hoof.

“Go ‘way,” he says eloquently.

You consider. You could almost certainly consider that an end of contract, if you wanted. Those are the terms of the deal: _until by by deed or death I release you_. Speech is a deed; he told you explicitly to leave, as releasement as anything. In a pinch, you could also try killing him—you aren’t carrying him anywhere right now, and so are under no obligation to his safety; he’s inebriate and morose and in range of your hooves.

You nudge him again.

“I said go away,” he says more clearly. “ _You_ belong with someone else—go find him.” 

You probably could. You really probably could. You are forty planetary systems from the last place you saw him and you can’t speak, write, or otherwise communicate a request for a spaceship berth. But you’ve been part of the mortal galaxy’s criminal underworld long enough to know a few tricks, including how stupid humans can get about what they think is a car. And it’s unlikely that you’d run into another person like Engstrom in the world, who would know how to stop you.

Nureyev rolls over and squints up at you—his glasses have been knocked off his face. “D’you know, horses have evolved on most settled planets, in the past six thousand years, to have antlers much like yours? It’s still a case of mistaken identity, but your taxonomic preference is simply outdated.”

You huff and step back, so you can use your antlers to scoop him onto your back. It’s a move you perfected decades ago with Jet. Jet was usually expecting it, or at least not prone and intoxicated, but Nureyev has the grace of a Faerie knight trained to the life of a cat burglar; he doesn’t fall. Not that you would let him.

“Fine, then,” he says, leaning against your neck but slur fading from his tongue as you start to walk away. “I did find out when they’re moving the diamonds, at least.”

It’s not bad, as life goes. He’s prickly where Jet was smooth, and he doesn’t explain his plans to you as much, but you don’t have to wear saddlebags or a fake steering wheel. His glamours are a Faerie child’s, he can barely make himself look anything but tall, pale, and thin, but they’re enough to make a human think what he wants, when the alternative is the nothingness the woods-witch left behind. You’re bored sometimes—he often doesn’t include you his plans at all; his expertise is charm and illusion, naturally; in the optimal course, he walks away with the treasure without needing a getaway ride at all. 

All the other times, though, he takes you _home._ For a minute here and a mile there, the air is clean and the light is pure and the sky and seasons may change but the land of Faerie is still eternal. You didn’t know lords and ladies could do that. You don’t know if they _can_ —maybe it’s just the changelings. 

But it’s an equal relief each time you return, a step through trees or over streams or simply from one foot to another and to the world of smoke and iron, change and death. You are a wild white stag of Faerie and you are none of the above, and you run _anywhere_ that you will.

Or, anywhere you are bid. You didn’t take the offer to leave; you are still under contract.

Until one day, Nureyev charters a cargo shuttle and sits anxiously astride you as it rendezvous with a larger ship. He’s been antsy for days, since a lunch meeting he wouldn’t say much about, save that you would be joining a group with some “old friends.” From the effort he’s put into his glamour, all bright eyes and charming smile, you suspect the no-longer-his Juno Steel.

Instead, the ships dock and the cargo bay doors open and there is Buddy, alive, and her lost Vespa, and Jet Siquliak.

You look at one another like you used to from across a river. There are no trees to dart into, here; there are also no clever traps of rope. Neither of you can run—you are in the small hold of a mortal spaceship, traces of iron in the walls, connected to the larger hold of another, also iron-laced ship. 

But you are still unapproachable, you know. For those clear-eyed enough to see, everything but the core of you is long-since stripped away: you are a wild white stag of Faerie: tall and proud, white as snow with antlers like sharpened birch. You may have been tamed, but it is a lord of Faerie who sits on your back, clad is glamour and grace. You have no need for anything else.

But also: you _are_ a wild white stag of Faerie, more unchangeably yourself than almost any being in two realms. You are what you are, including the very few things that can bind you—and he tricked you and raced you and rode you and won you; he named you and learned, hid, stole and stole away with you—and sold you, yes, for a while—and together, you are a _legend_.

So you nearly dislodge the faerie lordling with how quickly you leap forward, and you much-more-nearly push your Jet to the floor with how eagerly you knock into him, and taste the familiar salty tears on his cheeks. He smiles as he pets your nose just the way you like it, nearer to laughing than you’ve seen him in years.

Because you are his and he is yours, and that is the story at the heart of the legend. It always is. 

(You do end up needing to pin Nureyev to a wall with your antlers, before he agrees to release you from his service. He should learn to make more cautious agreements anyway, in dealing with creatures of Faerie. Never include your own death as an escape clause if you don’t also include a clause to prevent it. But as a favor without repayment required, you help him pose unapproachably when Juno does, eventually, join your little herd. There is merit in a little aloof wildness.

You don’t expect the human to arrive with a _Queen of Faerie_ at his side. But that is a story for another day—and it, too, may turn into a legend.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reunion scene, Vespa inching a little closer to Buddy and whispering, “Bud, I- the hallucinations are back again. The thief is riding a horse, and it’s- trying to eat Jet’s hair.”  
> “No, no, the Ruby 7 has always been like that,” Buddy murmurs back. “Remember that job on Yagasgard?”


End file.
